Meet Markus Sjölund, COO at Vimotek, one of ESA BIC Sweden’s successful alumni companies!
Hi Markus! How and when did your startup journey in space tech begin?
Our founder, Anatoliy Valentirov, moved to Sweden from Bulgaria in 2022 to setup Vimotek. He was an entrepreneur working with vision and motion technology for industrial and military applications, and had observed the growing need for such technologies in the space domain. Since then, we have been specializing in enabling technology for Rendezvous and Proximity Operations (RPO) and Local Space Situational Awareness (LSSA).
What have you been up to the past year?
It has been a most interesting year. We have added some amazing people to the team and grown from a handful of FTEs to about 15. We have won a bunch of interesting and very important institutional projects and we performed the first commercial project with our digital twin solution. Also, we were selected as one of Sweden's top 33 most promising technology startups.
Which have been your biggest accomplishments with Vimotek this far?
A key inflection point for the company was when our consortium won the EDF's call for solutions on "threat surveillance and protection of space-based assets". The BODYGUARD project, which was the name of our winning proposal, has earned us a lot of publicity and has opened up for many interesting conversations and collaborations.
What’s in your pipeline at the moment?
We have a lot going on, from commercial opportunities to institutional projects and defense collaborations. For example, we are soon about to start with one particularly exciting new EU project that has yet to be announced, and we are working steadily towards the first flight with our sensing technology planned for 2027.
Which advice would you give to startups that are thinking about going into the space industry?
The space industry can be a quite complex world to navigate successfully. Invest time and effort in relationships and in building your understanding for the institutional and commercial landscape.
What’s been the most valuable about being part of ESA BIC Sweden?
It is difficult to select one specific thing. It is everything from matching us with good advisors, to bringing us to interesting events, to questioning and challenging our assumptions and thinking.
Vimotek develops solutions for satellites that de-risk and enable desired interactions and anticipate and prevent undesired ones. We solve for Rendezvous Proximity Operations (RPO) to enable in-orbit services, and for Local Space Situational Awareness (LSSA) to keep satellites safe and operational.
We work with both RPO and LSSA through two complementary product domains. The first one is AI-driven onboard sensing and perception that turns sensing data into a solid foundation for satellite control, enabling reliable and precise manoeuvring of satellites relative to other objects. The second one is digital twins for simulation and validation of custom scenarios involving multiple spacecraft, modelling real conditions and events to de-risk and optimize mission execution.
